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A muddled start, awkward middle and contrived, feel-good (albeit prolonged) ending made for a disappointing matinee in “The Back-Up Plan.”
Off-putting from its onset, we see Zoe (Jennifer Lopez) amidst artificial insemination and spending a subsequent five minutes mentally recalling the chain of events that brought her to the clinic table.
It’s five minutes we don’t really need, at this point the formulaic quality has already been laid out and what could be a decent chick flick kicks off its first series of disappointing turns.
A woman with a ticking biological clock is impatient and takes matters into her own hands. She is then surprised to find “Mr. Right” with wrong timing.
The next 20 minutes are spent in the romance-courtship section where the right man, Stan (Alex O’Loughlin), unexpectedly shows up. For the purposes of this movie, the happenstance meeting occurs as they hail the same cab in the rain and argue over who got there first.
And again we know that they will begin as adversaries but end up romantically involved, in this case through Stan’s near-stalker persistence.
While we don’t expect “The Back-Up Plan” to break new ground (even with the added wrinkle of Zoe being pregnant) we should at least expect Stan to be more charming than frightening in his determination to court her. We also can hope for the lighthearted moments that ensued in which he spills wine and the two hose each other down to be more charming than awkward.
Of course, eventually Lopez must admit to Stan that she’s pregnant and Stan must decide whether he wants to stay with her and accept the responsibility of a pregnancy and children. This is at least the point where the movie improves: it finds the resonance most probably expected when heading to the cinema in the first place.
In its depictions of the trials of pregnancy, the movie takes an honest, humorous portrayal of one of the world’s most humbling experiences.
Whether it’s the comfort she’s found in her pregnancy pillow, the fast food lingering in her hair, her longing for the “cute butt” she used to have or the financial worries that come with children, these parents-to-be scenarios almost redeem the pitfalls of the movie’s awkward start.
Each fear proves to be a test in Stan and Zoe’s relationship and each makes them stronger until a final test in which Zoe must learn to overcome a crippling flaw: fear of abandonment.
While the comedy lacks surprises, it executes much of its comedy decently, particularly in a water-birthing scene with over-the-top earth mothers from Zoe’s single-mother-support group.
The glaring weakness, however, is the development of the relationship between Stan and Zoe, which could have started out as charming but instead turns into unrealistic and creepy. Unfortunately, what could have been a series of redeeming moments found in the shared strength needed during pregnancy doesn’t deliver.
